Liberal Talk Radio

Finally, some public discussion of an idea that Bruno and I have been talking about for years – get rid of the U.S. Air Force. … the Air Force should be eliminated, and its personnel and equipment integrated into the Army, Navy and Marine Corps … At the moment, the Army, Navy and Marine Corps [...]

Just as he promised in the campaign, President Obama is ratcheting up the American commitment in Afghanistan, doubling the number of troops there. The Prof and I talk a lot about Afghanistan on the show, because it’s such a fascinating country and crossroads and potential quagmire for foreign occupiers going back 1,000 years. Kevin Drum, [...]

Big Pharma kills terrorists: The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift. Four blue pills. [...]

When we last left our favorite bloated, overbudget next-generation jet fighter, the F-22 raptor, it was being sold as a vital weapon in the “War on Terror.” Desperate to keep their funding, Air Force Generals were trying to convince us that billion-dollar fighter jets could be used to, I don’t know… sniff out suicide bombers [...]

Reading this Doris Kearns Goodwin article on whether or not Obama should assemble a “team of rivals,” for his cabinet, the thought that immediately came to mind is that Obama should nominate Hillary Clinton for Secretary of Defense. She’s certainly qualified, having served on the Senate Armed Services committee. But more than that, it would [...]

I suspect that this is a feature, not a bug: In 1990, Congress enacted legislation requiring all federal agencies to pass independent audits. Every year, the Defense inspector general dispatched dozens of auditors to the military’s financial and accounting centers. Every year, they reported back that the job couldn’t be done. Defense Department records were [...]

Following up on a topic we broached on this week’s podcast, a detailed look at why Boeing lost the contract, from McClatchy and the TNT: Thompson and others say Boeing’s commercial airplane division was too focused on the 787 to pay much attention to the tankers. “The tanker was not as high a priority for [...]

The U.S. Air Force has adopted the phrase “Above All” as its new slogan. My evidence is strictly circumstantial, but I regard the Air Force slogan’s similarity to the results of a Youtube search for the phrase as…probably more than coincidental. Really, how much less subtle could this be? To paraphrase Mitt Romney, who let [...]

Obama has said in his policy statements that he’s going to bring troops home from Iraq without permanent bases there, but unless I’m wrong, there seems to be a great deal of wiggle room in his position: Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades [...]

[cue Don LaFontaine]In a world where turbaned madmen ACTUALLY WANT TO KILL YOU … [/Don LaFontaine] There’s something charming about the Russian’s insistence on pretending they’re still a world power. Last night, an anonymous American general broke some possibly alarming news: Over the weekend, a Russian bomber flew directly over an American aircraft carrier in [...]